1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an electronic system and method for use in the field of asset management and electronic commerce.
2. Description of the Related Art
The field of industrial equipment, such as forklifts, includes business entities at several different levels, including manufacturers, dealers, third-party financiers, and end-user customers. In one common arrangement, the dealer maintains an inventory of a wide variety of equipment types for rental to its end-user customers (i.e., the dealer's “rental fleet”). Some types of equipment in the dealer's rental fleet, however, are only infrequently needed by the dealer's end-user customers. Accordingly, such seldomly used items experience a reduced utilization rate compared to other items in the rental fleet. The dealer tolerates reduced utilization on the seldomly used items for a number of reasons, including maintaining customer satisfaction, and, hopefully, not giving the customer a reason to “shop around” for a new dealer who may have larger inventory of seldomly used pieces of equipment. Conventional methods of conducting business, particularly providing rental fleets, have obvious shortcomings, inasmuch as the full economic value of some items in the dealer's rental fleet cannot be realized.
Another common business arrangement involves a third-party financing company that buys pieces of industrial equipment from the manufacturer and then leases the equipment to the end-user customer. The customer then utilizes the industrial equipment (the customer's “fleet”) in its business. In some circumstance, the customer actively “manages” the fleet of industrial equipment, attending to repair and maintenance, the acquisition of replacement equipment, and the retirement of old or unproductive equipment from the fleet. In other circumstances, however, the leasing company performs the asset management function. In either set of circumstances, challenges to be overcome by fleet managers include how to effectively and efficiently determine the timing, selection, and acquisition of replacement equipment, and the disposal of equipment being retired from the fleet or coming to an end of the lease term.
Known approaches to deal with the foregoing challenges fall mostly into the use of manual methods. For example, determining whether to replace a poorly performing piece of equipment has typically been based on limited data relating to the equipment known by an experienced fleet manager.
Another approach known for asset management pertains to passenger vehicle fleets and involves a computer-based, Internet-enabled vehicle selector program. The vehicle selector program provides average values for a plurality of different operating parameters and vehicle types that may be of interest to a fleet manager considering vehicle replacement. These parameters may include average monthly maintenance cost, and average miles per gallon. While the vehicle selector program provides at least some useful financial and performance information to the fleet manager, such a system fails to address the ultimate question fleet managers encounter: How does a change (i.e., an addition, or a subtraction) in the configuration of my fleet effect its overall performance? The known vehicle selector program simply does not provide information as to how a combined fleet would perform.
Another challenge, particularly acute for third-party financing companies, involves how to effectively and efficiently dispose of assets whose lease has ended, or will end in the near future. Conventional analysis approaches have been haphazard at best. They have included utilization of well-known auction systems, posting of off-lease equipment on electronic bulletin boards and the like for sale purposes, as well as utilization of consignment networks. One key shortcoming of all these known systems of disposing of end-of-lease assets manifests itself in the failure to fully realize the full, remaining economic value of the asset. One factor contributing to this shortcoming involves the lack of information available to potential purchasers, renters and lessees. Information concerning the condition, treatment, and, particularly, the maintenance history of the asset during its operating life up to the time the asset is being offered for disposal are all important in determining a sales price, but are frequently unavailable. In any event, such information is never convenient to obtain. For example, it is known in the passenger vehicle fleet industry to make some level of maintenance history data on particular vehicle available to the potential purchaser. However, to obtain this data, the potential purchaser must make a telephonic request to the asset's fleet manager, who manually looks up the information, and provides it (e.g., by way of facsimile) to the potential purchaser if it is even available. Obtaining such information, therefore, involves a significant investment, both in time and effort. The investment is entirely lost if the purchase is not consummated, and is still partially lost even if the asset is finally transferred. The time lag involved in obtaining the information also leads to undesirable inefficiency. For example, a purchaser may have to make a quick decision regarding whether or not to buy a first asset, which would preclude a lengthy investigation of a second asset (e.g., the first asset may be sold by the time the investigation of the second asset has been completed). This is particularly inefficient if the second asset is a better “fit” for the purchaser than the first asset.
There is therefore a need for a system and method for facilitating transactions, and for managing assets of a fleet, that minimizes or eliminates one or more of the types problems exemplified above.